The Rat Catchers' Olympics

by Colin Cotterill

  The Batswana screamed their delight and the other supporters offered a polite round of applause. The judges counted the bodies and wrote the figure 27 on their blackboard. They asked the English translator to step forward so that Sammy could describe how he’d been able to trap such an impressive number of rats with just a PVC pipe and a length of rope.

  “It’s all in the balance,” he said. “I knotted the rope around the middle of the pipe and tied it to the edge of the old table in there. Half of the pipe was hanging over the edge. I baited the inside of the pipe with peanut butter just beyond the rope pivot and blocked the overhanging end with old rags. Our friendly rat smells the bait, walks along the pipe, steps beyond the point of no return and the pipe assumes a vertical position. The rat falls to the blocked end and is unable to climb back up the slippery pipe. I undo the rope and empty the rat into this burlap sack. Rats do not do very well in confined, airless spaces so they die of exhaustion and asphyxia.”

  The audience, growing by the minute, was most impressed with this clever method. Even the Lao allowed the man from Botswana a rally of percussion. They were however saving their Lao Cheer for their champion. A second official went to unit number five, where the front step was crumbling and overgrown with weeds. Yusov the Moscow Area Eight champion burst through the door. The Soviet supporters clapped and whistled. Many had turned up merely to complain about the noise but had become intoxicated by the wonder of it all. Yusov was topless and displayed a fine set of abdominal muscles. He walked to the street dragging an old curtain like a sleigh behind him. It bore an even more impressive pile of dead rats. He refused help from the officials and insisted on lugging the heavy load to the front of the judges’ table by himself. He put down the curtain and posed like a bodybuilder for the cameras. As they counted the corpses, the judges asked Yusov to describe how he’d been able to kill so many rats in just one night. He ran back into the house and reemerged carrying a most peculiar device. Roger provided a translation for the Lao.

  “I punch a hole in the top and the bottom of this coffee can with an old nail,” said the Russian. “I straighten the coat hanger and pass it through the holes to make my axle. Like this.”

  He held the wire at each end and spun the coffee tin. It revolved quite happily around the axis.

  “I hook each end of the wire around the top of the twenty-liter bucket,” he continued, “which I fill with water. I spread my bait, in this case, peanut butter, onto the surface of the coffee can. My rats smell the bait and jump onto the can. The can spins from their weight and they drop into the water. Of course rats can swim and one might be able to tread water through the night. But more than one causes panic and they end up drowning each other. All I have to do is fish the dead rat from the bucket and prepare for the next.”

  The judges in their rubber gloves had finished counting the bodies. To the crowd’s amazement there were exactly fifty. The officials wrote that number on the blackboard and the Russian bowed deeply in response to the ovation. Then he turned and crooked his arms in the air to show the crowd what kind of back muscles a man needed in order to catch fifty rats in one night.

  The Lao supporters already had their doubts but when the official knocked on door number seven and nobody answered they feared the worst. He knocked again and waited. And waited. And, finally, the door opened a fraction and Chom, half asleep, poked his head through the crack. He clearly couldn’t remember where he was and looked embarrassed to see so many people gathered there. The Lao cheered regardless and beat drums and blew kazoos. Those who knew his name shouted “Chom, Chom, Chom.” But this seemed to confuse him even more.

  Finally, something clicked and he held up his index finger to the newsletter official and went back inside. The crowd remembered that the Russian had returned with a curtain piled with fifty corpses and wondered whether the Lao could better that. But Chom returned with a single, average-sized dead rat hanging by the tail. The crowd was too embarrassed to make any noise at all. The newsletter official offered to carry the one rat to the front of the judges’ table and Chom accepted the offer.

  “I smell a rat,” said Civilai from the heart of the Lao supporters.

  “Me too,” said Siri.

  They pushed Roger forward to interpret for the Lao vermin eradication officer. So as not to seem racist, the judges asked him how he’d been able to kill his one rat.

  “I sang,” said Chom proudly.

  “You sang and the rat came to you?” said the judge, just to clarify.

  “That’s right,” said Chom. There were already some titters from the Soviet section of the crowd.

  “And then?” asked the judge.

  “Then he dies.”

  The judges were no longer able to keep straight faces.

  “Remarkable,” they said.

  Roger, wading through the sarcasm, was ready to leave but the rude journalist from the Social Works Newsletter wouldn’t let the Lao off his hook.

  “And may I ask what you did with the peanut butter?” he said.

  “Oh, I ate it, sir,” said Chom. “It was far too good to waste on a rat, don’t you think?”

  “Of course. And what type of song did you sing to attract your rat?” asked the journalist.

  The Soviet supporters laughed louder. Chom nodded and considered the question.

  “It’s an ancient Lao folk song,” he said. “And it’s sung in the traditional language of rodents. It goes immediately to the rats’ brains and they are so overcome with emotion that they have no choice but to seek out the source of this magical tune. They die of a broken heart.”

  After the translation, all but the Lao roared with laughter. Chom smiled with them.

  “Perhaps you could give us a sample of this nostalgic rodent song,” said the journalist who was now playing directly to the crowd.

  “I don’t mind,” said Chom.

  He began to sing the first few lines of the haunting but somewhat squeaky refrain. The laughter was fractionally louder than the Lao Cheer. Chom took a small bow.

  “And yet, despite singing this beautiful lilting dirge, it shocks me that you were only able to capture the one rat,” said the journalist, his back to his victim.

  “Oh, I didn’t catch one rat,” said Chom.

  “No?” said the journalist. “There’s another one?”

  Roger was ready to thump the journalist on his puffy red nose.

  “Well, sir,” said Chom, “I’m not really that good at counting but I think there might be another hundred and sixty or seventy back in the house. I hurt my back in the gym so I didn’t want to carry them.”

  Once they’d heard the translation the officials and volunteers froze for a few seconds before running into the house. They found the rats, almost two hundred of them in a circular formation around an old cushion. It was as if they really had come to listen to their song. The officials brought them out and laid them in front of the judges’ table in batches of twenty. The pile reached the tabletop. The Lao supporters raised a cheer that would have humbled the previous day’s football final crowd. They drummed, they hummed they strummed and they sang. Yusov the Russian stormed off without his shirt. Sammy gave his Lao friend a Botswana hug. The number 187 was written on the blackboard beside Chom’s name and he stood proudly on the podium of milk crates and bent forward for the chief judge to hang the gold-colored honey tin lid on string around his neck.

  The racket made every street sweeper and armed soldier look up at the village bus when it passed on its way to Lenin Stadium. The Lao had a medal at last and it wasn’t a charitable concession or a no-show walkover. It was won with expertise and panache, but not, Siri and Civilai suspected, with total honesty. They sat on either side of Chom, each taking a hand. Daeng and Dtui leaned over from the seat behind.

  “Damn fine display,” said Siri.

  “Thank you, comrade,” said Chom.

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nbsp; “It’s a coincidence,” said Civilai. “My grandmother used that self-same technique to wipe out the cockroach population from her kitchen. She’d sing an old cockroach folk song in fluent cockroach and they’d line up and jump in the wash tub.”

  “You don’t say?” said Chom.

  “I swear on her pyre.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you doubt me?” asked Chom.

  “Come on, son,” said Siri. “How did you do it? I mean, I have nothing against fairy stories and magic but I sense a more devious sleight of hand.”

  Chom looked out the window and smiled.

  “Promise you won’t tell anyone?” he said.

  “Promise,” they said.

  “Well, when we did the tour of the block,” he began, “I noticed there were a lot of old mattresses in house number six. They were damp and mildewed but perfect for what I had in mind. I opened the rear window and pretended I couldn’t stand the smell. So I requested and was given house number seven. I used my cigarette to keep a small fire burning until I was sure the volunteers were drowsy, then I climbed out my back window and into house number six. I used the stuffing from the mattresses to block all the rat holes on the east side; that was where the Russian was staying. I put a pile of mattresses upstairs and down and set light to ’em. Moldy old mattresses burn real slow and they make a hell of a lot of smoke. The smoke disorients the rats and they come staggering out of their runs. They’re looking for any place with no smoke. As they couldn’t get into house number five they had no choice but to head for seven. That happened to be my abode. They were blinded and disoriented. I thumped ’em on the head with the mallet and laid ’em out in a circle around some old cushion. That last part was just . . .”

  “Showmanship,” said Civilai.

  “Yeah, that’s it. At about four I blocked up the holes and opened all the windows to let the smoke out. I had my peanut butter breakfast and lay myself down for a couple of hours’ sleep.”

  The old boys shook his hand and laughed with him all the way to the stadium. They’d solved another mystery. As the bus entered the Olympic coach park the fire station in Zyablikovo received a call on their emergency line from a concerned citizen. A block of terraced houses had caught fire and was burning like Hades itself.

  Chapter Twenty

  Closure

  It was over too soon. The Kremlin clock chimed 7 p.m. and the trumpeters called in the procession. The national flags led the way, followed by the athletes. In the spirit of the Games the competitors mingled and joked together as they strolled around the track, waving at the crowd. Nations whose governments were not on speaking terms walked hand in hand and heart to heart. Sadly, the Lao had not been allowed to carry their drum. Dtui felt sorry for the terrace of card-holders who had performed their pixilated stunts in both ceremonies. It was they who produced an endless canvas of remarkable pictures and effects by flipping from card to card as per instructions from an unseen conductor who talked to them through earphones. They could see nothing of the spectacle in the stadium, of course, because of the lumps of cardboard constantly in front of their faces. Dtui worried about such things.

  In front of a bank of twenty microphones that rendered him invisible, the Olympic Chairman grieved for those not able to participate and proclaimed the 22nd Olympiad closed. The Olympic flag was lowered, someone turned off the gas and the flame died. An armada of doves was released into the night sky to do battle with the fireworks. The athletes joined the spectators in the stands and were entertained by gymnasts with hoops and flags and unfailing smiles and not a gram of body fat among them.

  And at the end of it all a giant Misha balloon was escorted into the stadium by enthusiastic and presumably heavy young men and women who held on to his tow-ropes for dear life. Although there was certainly a lot wrong with the Soviet Union, the old bear symbolized all that was right with it. For ten days it had brought together the citizens of fifteen USSR states that didn’t particularly like each other and made them feel like family. It had been a perfect show so everyone felt the loss when they let go their ropes and Misha rose majestically into the night sky to the lilting tune of “Goodbye, Moscow.” The words of poet Dobronrorov accompanied Misha heavenwards until he was out of sight, probably to play havoc with air lanes and eventually end his days draped over some peasant’s hut in Armenia. But, wherever he went, he left not a dry eye in the Lenin Stadium. The magnificent 22nd Olympiad was closed.

  There was a mix of emotions in the Village that night. The live bands and performers did their best to cheer everyone up. Athletes who had deprived themselves for four years had a beer or two and began the process of getting out of shape. New lovers walked hand in hand by the fountains and watched the endless firework display. New friends in saris and sarongs, in straw trilbies and fezzes and shemaghs danced together to the ubiquitous sounds of Boney M and for fifty more years when they heard “Ra Ra Rasputin” on the radio they would probably remember a time when everybody loved everybody else, however temporarily. Civilai was right. The Olympics was a kind of war: a war where the losers don’t die and the winners don’t gloat, a war where the armies get together afterward for a drink and a cuddle.

  It was about three by the time the Lao team returned to their dormitory and collapsed on their shorter-than-most beds and sighed one last pleasurable sigh. Siri and Daeng were the last to retire. They’d just been talking to Phosy on the telephone. They sat now on a fountain wall with their bare feet in the water and a bottle between them.

  “It really was something, wasn’t it?” said Daeng.

  “We’ll not see the like of it again,” said Siri.

  He and Civilai had binged on some twenty movies over the course of the Games but that had not detracted at all from their involvement in a great spectacle.

  “What a ceremony,” said Daeng.

  “It brought a tear to my eye.”

  “It was all I could do to stop myself wagging the whole night.”

  “Our team will never forget it.”

  “I’ve never seen Dtui happier,” said Daeng.

  “Every time her man phones it’s with better and better news,” said Siri. “And how many women learn that their husband is officially nominated to become chief of police?”

  “One a year in Laos, I’d say.”

  “I didn’t really need a number.”

  “Sorry.”

  “They’ll realize their error soon enough,” said Siri. “Phosy won’t beg and roll over like his predecessors. He’ll stir up all kinds of dung.”

  “To Phosy,” said Daeng taking up the bottle and swigging from it. She handed it to Siri.

  “To Phosy,” he said.

  They didn’t really know what it was they were drinking. The label was in Russian and it could have been some type of paint thinner for all they knew. But what a way to go.

  “To Phosy,” came a gravelly voice from behind them. They turned to see a Russian soldier with an AK-47 trained on them. He was in full dress uniform including the helmet. Everything about the situation told the old couple they should adopt the defensive position and prepare for battle. But they were drunk and couldn’t be bothered. And the soldier was even drunker. His boots remained rooted to the spot but he swayed from side to side like a dandelion in a swirling wind. Siri held out the bottle to him. The soldier handed Siri the gun and drank. He then, slowly (and Daeng would confess later, erotically), removed his uniform item by item. When he was completely naked he stepped into the fountain, lay on his stomach and attempted, in thirty centimeters of water, to emulate the great swim of his countryman Salnikov.

  Siri and Daeng went to their room delighted that every country has its own Crazy Rajhid and, to Siri’s great pleasure, Daeng was still wagging from the sight of the fine-bodied soldier. Once their own Olympic records had been set they fell asleep. Daeng would have slept like a bear if only, twenty minutes later, her h
usband had not yanked on her arm.

  “Daeng, Daeng, are you asleep?” he said.

  “I’d like to be,” she purred.

  “Daeng, I need a map.”

  It was breakfast time at the Good Luck Café. Phosy arrived late and shook hands with all the coffee drinkers whether he knew them or not.

  “Good morning, Chief Inspector,” said Oval Man.

  “Is there any news that doesn’t break first in the Good Luck?” Phosy asked. “I was only appointed yesterday afternoon.”

  “You can’t keep a good spy network down,” said Lenin Cap.

  Phosy signaled to Mint, the owner, for a coffee and baguette. The Thai embargo was still on so there was no butter.

  “Congratulations,” said Mint. “But I can think of much more salubrious establishments to celebrate your promotion.”

  “But none so entertaining,” said Phosy.

  “Have you solved the murder of your old soldier friend?” Trench Coat asked.

  “To be honest, that’s why I’ve come here,” said the detective.

  “Ah, a killer in our midst,” said Flakey.

  “I confess, it was me,” said Lenin Cap.

  “You couldn’t hit a tree with a stream of piss,” said Trench Coat.

  “It’s my eyes,” said Lenin Cap. “Nothing wrong with my trigger finger. I just can’t find the trigger.”

  The old boys laughed.

  “So, tell us, chief,” said Trench Coat. “Who’ll be spending time behind bars?”